Agencia, relativismo y conocimiento extendido

Abstract

I examine whether the theory of extended knowledge (TEK) can provide a fully satisfactory account of epistemic agency by combining active externalism and virtue reliabilism. TEK would be a fully satisfactory theory if it could explain how agents are epistemically responsible by both having and manifesting a cognitive disposition to appropriately respond to defeating reasons vis-à-vis their epistemic status. My negative thesis is that TEK fails to achieve this goal because its first-order explanatory principles lead to scepticism. As a result, the theory should be abandoned. My positive thesis, however, is that TEK can provide a fully satisfactory explanation of agency if epistemic relativism is adopted as a second-order principle. Although this manoeuvre involves adjusting the metaepistemology underlying TEK, it makes it possible to retain the combination of active externalism and virtue reliabilism that constitutes this epistemological theory.